Illustrations

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No matter how efficient the mechanics of warfare become, no matter how smart the bombs or how accurate the bullets, the process of dying remains grimly constant. An artery, after all, will hemorrhage just as violently whether it is severed by a musket ball or Scud shrapnel. Soldiers, the medical...

THERE are working stiffs and there are working stiffs, but there is no one in the county quite like Stan, the Quarter Million Dollar Man. Stan works at the Cochran School of Nursing at St. John's Riverside Hospital in Yonkers. The 406-bed hospital, which opened in 1869, decided last year that they...

In the courthouse where he sat as a Nassau County judge until he was charged with stabbing his wife two years ago, Paul E. Kowtna formally resigned today and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Mr. Kowtna, 53, had been suspended from his duties on the bench with pay, $131,700 a year, since...

The man accused of stabbing George Harrison on Thursday was charged with attempted murder today and then sent to a prison mental clinic for evaluation. ''This is an exceptional course of action, but we feel you need treatment immediately,'' the magistrate presiding over the case told the man,...

A man armed with a large knife broke into the house of George Harrison, the former Beatle, early this morning and stabbed him in the chest, the authorities said, and evidence emerged that the assailant may have harbored a dangerous obsession with the band. Mr. Harrison, 56, one of three remaining...

LAST July, Sarabeth Goslee gave birth to her daughter Makiah. If not for a program provided by the state, Makiah would not have had health insurance after her birth. The program, Health Insurance for Uninsured Kids and Youth, known as Husky, provides health insurance for an estimated 20,000...

My wife and I had barely settled down across from each another when she got the bad news: she had smallpox. An inauspicious start, I thought, trying to tamp down any sense of satisfaction. This became easier to do once I got my own diagnosis: spotted fever. Things weren't looking so hot for me,...

A collapsed lung has a random way of reopening as air presses in from a life support system, and tissue damage is more likely if the air pressure is not varied in a random pattern, scientists suggest. A team at Boston University said that mechanical ventilators should supply air with randomized...

Fish Tank-itis KEEP your hands out of the fish tank'' might sound like a parent's admonition to a mischievous child. But it is a message that should apply to everyone who keeps tropical fish, according to a report in a British medical journal about a bacterial skin disease the researchers...

For six months, as Congress has considered far-reaching proposals to regulate managed health care, the industry has waged a public relations offensive under the slogan ''putting patients first.'' But last week, lobbyists for the industry mobilized an extremely different offensive, resisting any...